Judgement Day, page 21
A dreadful sensation, something darker than fear, began in the pit of her stomach and crawled towards her chest. ‘What’s the matter?’ she said, coming around the couch to face him.
He stood up. ‘What do you think is the matter, Jillian?’
‘I don’t know.’
Liar.
‘What’s the matter is I feel like a single parent. What’s the matter is you spending every waking hour at work and, when you do finally come home, not showing one iota of interest in anything that’s happened in my day, let alone Ollie’s. We’ve been over this before.’ He sounded as exasperated as she’d ever heard him. ‘You’ve gone back to work so you can forget you ever had a kid.’
‘Aaron! How can you –’
‘No.’ He held up a hand to silence her. ‘It’s true, don’t argue, don’t try to tell me I’m interpreting it wrong. I hoped going back would be good for you, I hoped it would be helpful, that you’d remember who you were. I didn’t expect it to mean you’d forget about us. And I didn’t think you’d use it as an excuse to avoid working on yourself.’
How she hated that expression, ‘working on herself’ – there was something so embarrassingly earnest about it.
‘I know you’re still not taking the medication. I know that you cancelled your psychologist’s appointments. You clearly have no desire to get better, you just want to stick your head in the sand.’
Jillian was surprised yet again by the strength of her sudden anger. ‘Okay, fine, what do you want me to say? Oh, how interesting that Ollie did some crawl or clap or whatever. What do I care?’
‘That’s my point! You should care!’
‘Well, I don’t.’
He looked physically wounded and said nothing further, just turned and left the room.
She got into the shower and took a long time, much longer than was necessary to wash her hair and body and shave her legs. She tried to breathe deeply. Part of her wanted to cry. She had never been able to tell Aaron just how bad it was in those months alone with Ollie. Her husband was so in love with their new son, so enamoured of their new family unit, that she could not bring herself to describe to him the dark thoughts she had, the images that would bombard her when she closed her eyes. Part of her also worried about how he might react, that she might look into his eyes and see disgust, or worse, fear.
She blow-dried her hair, pulled on a dress, and emerged to see Aaron in the kitchen taking pouches of homemade baby food from the freezer and putting them into a shopping bag. Ollie’s baby bag was open on the kitchen table and had been filled with nappies and clothes.
‘What’s up?’ she asked, trying to sound light-hearted even as she knew she wasn’t going to like what he said next.
‘I need to get away from this,’ he said. ‘I need you to figure out whether you actually want to get better or not.’
‘I am getting better,’ she insisted, ‘I am better, I’m just doing it my way.’ Her throat began to constrict as she uttered the words so that she felt as though she were choking on them. She knew that she was lying but she was also afraid of telling the truth.
He’d never be able to look at me the same way again.
‘Are you?’ he said. ‘Really?’ Then he picked up his phone and keys and walked out the front door.
Chapter 26
She left for work the next morning while it was still dark, not entirely sure why. It was no longer necessary to avoid Ollie. The office was quiet and still and in the half-light, surrounded by unoccupied desks and silent phones, she ate every piece of food she could find at McClintock’s desk and tried to think only of work.
The rest of the team slowly filtered in, Mossman with tales of her appallingly behaved children, Hastie with complaints about the traffic. Des, never one for mornings, offered only a passing nod. Only the bravest or most foolhardy detective would bother trying to engage him in conversation before his second instant coffee of the day.
At eight-thirty there was still no sign of McClintock.
‘Anyone heard from Mick?’ she asked and was greeted with silence or shaking heads.
She refreshed her email again and again, hoping that Rahul Sharma’s phone records might miraculously have been expedited, that Shanahan might have been sighted somewhere, that something, anything, might have happened.
At nine forty-five, her desk phone rang.
‘Detective Basset, it’s Angela Hui. Do you think you could come to the law courts? As soon as you can. We’ve had a threatening letter arrive, and something else. Judge Phillips, Christianne, everyone is in a real state.’
Jillian got to her feet. ‘I’ll be there in fifteen,’ she told the registry manager.
Angela met Jillian in the now too familiar lobby, her cheeks red and her eyes wide.
‘This way,’ she said, setting off at once towards the public entrance to the large courtroom they had previously met the judges in, talking all the while. ‘To give you the background, Glenda – she’s the woman who does the mail for all the courts – is training a new employee at the moment. Typically the process is, if things are addressed to the registrar or directly to the court we open them down here, and if they’re addressed to an individual judge or associate, or to chambers, they’re taken upstairs unopened. Glenda told the trainee to take a letter to Christianne in court. She’s sitting with Grant at the moment in 2A. Christianne opened the mail while court was in session, and . . . Anyway, Grant’s adjourned till the afternoon so that this can all be dealt with. He shouldn’t even be here given the stress he’s under at present.’
Angela knocked on the door to 2A and was met with the brief clicking of the lock, followed by Christianne D’Santo’s skeletal face trapped in the same agonised expression as the morning Jillian first met her. ‘Hello, Detective,’ she said dully. ‘It’s on the table, near the computer.’
The associate pointed to a single piece of paper lying next to a standard-sized Australia Post envelope and two small, glinting objects. The paper contained only one sentence, written in black texta in a bold hand: Don’t think this ends before I want it to.
Jillian looked at the envelope. Unlike the note, the address had been typed. The stamp indicated a postbox on Elizabeth Street that Jillian suspected was one of the busiest in the city. It was marked to the attention of ‘Judge Philip’.
‘Spelled his name wrong,’ she said absently as she moved to look at the objects that had accompanied the letter – two diamond stud earrings.
‘I noticed that too.’ Grant Phillips had materialised from behind his bench. He was still wearing his judicial robes and had a troubled expression on his face. He unclipped the hidden gate that separated his platform from the greater courtroom and came to survey the items with Jillian.
‘They’re Harriet’s earrings,’ he said with an attempt at calmness. ‘I’m ninety-nine per cent sure. I know they’re common enough, but I gave them to her; think I helped her put them in before the funeral too.’
He made to pick them up. ‘Don’t,’ Jillian said. ‘There might be DNA or prints.’ She pulled on a pair of latex gloves and transferred the earrings, note and envelope to an evidence bag.
‘Well, DNA would be something,’ the judge said, with the smallest hint of optimism.
‘Is there anything we should be doing?’ Angela asked Jillian. ‘Do we need to close the building again? Most of the judges are doing everything remotely but obviously I can’t put the non-judicial staff at risk either.’
‘I don’t think so,’ Jillian said. ‘We’ve already got increased security, we’ll liaise with uniform about a further increased presence and we’ll take prints from all of you but that will be about all, I’d think. I’m sorry, this must have been an awful letter to receive.’
Christianne gave a sniff and Angela looked towards her compassionately. Grant Phillips left Jillian’s side and came to stand by the young associate. He held her shoulder with one hand. ‘You head home whenever you need, and take a taxi. Alright? Angela, can you organise for one of the other associates to relieve Christianne for the afternoon?’
Angela nodded. ‘If you’re sure you want to stay too, Judge? I can get Matthew down here with you. Christianne, I’m going to get security to drive you home.’
‘That might be good,’ the associate conceded. She was looking up at the judge, her eyes dull. ‘Is there anything else you need me to do? Before I go?’
‘You’re a good girl,’ Grant Phillips said. ‘If Detective Basset says it’s alright I’m happy for you to leave right now.’ He looked expectantly towards Jillian who, after confirming that she would contact Christianne later, agreed that she should go home. The young woman got to her feet shakily and left the courtroom through the public entrance.
Both the judge and the registry manager looked after her as the heavy door swung shut. Angela locked it immediately. ‘I’ve suggested counselling,’ Grant Phillips said, apparently to no one in particular. ‘She says she’s not ready yet. She’s lost whatever weight she had after Kaye died and cries at her desk half the day but what else can I do? It’s not good, Ange.’
‘I’ll talk to her again,’ Angela assured him. ‘Tell her she needs to take some proper leave.’
Jillian followed the judge and Angela out of the courtroom. ‘I didn’t think you’d be back in court so soon,’ she said to him as they waited for the lift.
‘I’d be going stir-crazy at home,’ he said, ‘just waiting to hear something. I’d almost convinced myself last night that she’s going to turn up dead somewhere. I was sure of it. And then we get this. It doesn’t read like she’s dead, does it? I mean, if she’s dead, why not just leave her somewhere, or tell me outright?’
‘That’s the question. Obviously we hope she’s indeed alive, but there’s no ransom note we’d typically expect in a kidnapping. I think we all need to remember that we’re not dealing with a normal person here.’ They boarded the lift and Angela pushed the button for level twelve. ‘Someone who’s willing to kill in cold blood isn’t going to behave the way everyone else might.’
‘I suppose,’ Phillips said, ‘this means the two things are connected. Why else would someone take Hari if not because of me? My work? Poor Damien. He desperately wants to come home to see me, but I’ve told him not to. I don’t want him anywhere near me until we know what’s going on. If something were to happen to him too . . .’ He looked at Jillian. ‘Do you have children? I can’t remember if I’ve asked you.’
‘I don’t,’ Jillian said.
Why did I say that?
Angela excused herself at her office and Jillian followed the judge to his chambers. He directed her to the rooms next to Virginia Maiden’s. ‘I swapped,’ he said by way of explanation. ‘Used to be next to Kaye but I couldn’t cope with walking that way every day, thinking about what happened. These are Saul’s old chambers. He’s almost wrapped up now.’ He opened the internal door. ‘So I’ve got Saul’s old chambers and Kaye’s old associates. Mine both finished up earlier in the year, went to the bar,’ he added as an aside.
‘I was wondering,’ she said when they were seated, ‘whether you recalled a woman called Kim Surle?’
He thought for a moment. ‘I don’t think so. Should I?’
‘She’s an old client of yours and Kaye’s, before you became judges. Her name’s just come up in our enquiries.’
‘Really?’ He looked interested. ‘Do you know anything about the case? About her?’
‘She’s employed in retail now. I suppose you would have seen her about fifteen years ago; she’s around forty-five now, blonde. Said the husband wasn’t violent, just a property settlement.’
‘Doesn’t ring a bell at all. The ones I remember from those days tend to be the difficult ones. The real prick clients. Engineers – they’re always awful, too smart for their own good, and can’t get their head around the idea that parenting is considered to be an equal contribution to whatever money they were bringing in. Doctors are usually nasty too – god complexes, not used to being told no.’
‘You did this case pro bono, she remembers that,’ Jillian said.
This time there was the merest twitch of the judge’s eye. ‘Did I? I did do that a bit, back in the day. Mainly for women without much money, obviously – they were Kaye’s bread and butter for a while. Back then I was charging about three thousand a day and working five days a week. If I made twelve grand rather than fifteen every so often it didn’t really materially change my life. I used to do it a bit. I suppose I felt it renewed those women’s faith in the male species and helped them out that tiny bit. I suspect that was one of the reasons Kaye used to brief me so much, she knew I was a softie.’
‘The hearing you had with Rahul Sharma the other day – did anything of significance happen in that, anything that might have upset him?’
‘No, not at all.’ The judge leaned back in his chair. ‘It was very quick, all by agreement in the end, we were just determining how to proceed. This issue with the missing judgement has created a few problems – primarily that we can’t be certain that the version on our server is identical to Kaye’s final version; that the reasons in the two versions are the same. But as I explained to them both, the doctor and Lisa Nettle, the actual orders are clear. Sharma represented himself, that was the only surprise – he’s previously been legally represented but he indicated he wanted to seek some different legal advice. So we’ve adjourned for a few weeks to allow him to do so. We’ll see what he says once he’s had that. The version I’ve read is very much what I would have expected, I’d be surprised if the final version was at all different. Personally, I think she got it wrong, but that’s neither here nor there.’
He looked out his window for a moment and then back at Jillian. ‘Do you really think DNA might be retrievable from those earrings?’ he asked.
‘Or the envelope or note,’ Jillian said. ‘We’ll ask the lab to look at them as a matter of urgency.’ Her eye caught the judge’s wallet and keys, sitting on the corner of his desk. She could see the very edge of a five-dollar note and thought of Virginia Maiden’s story about Harriet. ‘Did you happen to see the interaction between Judge Maiden and your wife at the retirement party?’ she asked. ‘Something about some dropped cash.’
Grant Phillips shook his head. ‘Only the aftermath. That was all over before I realised what was happening. Think I might have been chatting to Saul. Harriet was standing near me but I wasn’t paying attention. Do you really think there might be DNA?’ he asked again. ‘Wouldn’t that be something?’
Jillian looked again at the items she had tucked into her bag. The earrings, if they had been freshly removed from Harriet with the intention of terrorising her husband might surely have some speck of her on them, although that was not terribly useful in itself. She was not optimistic about there being anything on the note. The envelope was a new one and had been secured with tape rather than licked, but tape could trap the smallest of fibres. She examined what she could see of the adhesive through the evidence bag and realised with a jolt that there was something trapped under the tape. When she saw what it was, hope flared in her that this time, obtaining DNA was in fact a real possibility.
This could be it! This might break it open.
But why did you tell him you didn’t have a kid?
PART THREE
Chapter 27
As she drove back to St Kilda Road, Jillian experienced a strong dissonance between the emotions she thought she should have and the way she actually felt. The revelation that Harriet Phillips had most likely been taken gave the investigation renewed purpose and clarified the best avenues of enquiry; it was also probable that they would be able to obtain a DNA sample. And yet her mind churned instead with guilt.
Did I really do that? Deny having a kid?
Yes, but only because I’m private.
Liar! That wasn’t why.
What kind of a mother lies about that?
The type whose husband leaves her?
By the time she’d parked the car, she was so overwhelmed she felt dizzy. She wanted to confess to her husband and child, and have them forgive her – not just for denying Ollie’s existence that morning, but for every negative thought she’d had about him. She wanted absolution.
Kind of sounds like you’re having a bit of a panic spike.
Aaron doesn’t want to talk to you anyway.
She breathed deeply, trying to calm herself by counting to eight with each exhalation.
‘Oi!’ The yell was matched by a sharp rapping on the car window.
It was McClintock, his face urgent. He rapped again. ‘Where have you been? I’ve called you about seven times.’
‘What’s up?’ she asked, getting unsteadily out of the car.
‘Shanahan’s back. Come on, I’ll drive.’
They did not talk much on the drive to Lara. The outbound city traffic was languid – a succession of roadworks had reduced the major arterials to single lanes. Prior to Ollie, Jillian and Aaron had taken this road a few times a year to a favourite Airbnb in Torquay, where they would spend a week drinking wine, cooking for friends and attempting to surf.
She had messaged Aaron and hoped for a response by now, something soothing telling her he would see her in a few days, that he just needed some space – but there’d been nothing. In the entirety of their relationship, this was the first time they had argued to the extent that she felt genuinely concerned for their future.
You might have done it this time.
‘Let’s talk about Shanahan,’ she said, not wanting to dwell on Aaron or the awful things that had been said. ‘What’s our theory? He somehow finds his way up to chambers last year and messes with Bailey by taking her wallet. After that he does nothing for a while. Then he sneaks up again, kills her, then bides his time before kidnapping Harriet Phillips?’
